morgynleri:

Not sure where it’s going, and I am sure it’s going to need a bunch of revising before it can go on AO3 (if for nothing else, because there are so many people that have the same last name and that my POV character wouldn’t think of by their first names, and aaaaaahhhhhh).

But so, have some OCs looking at their flattened city, and being glad they’re paranoid ex-Obsidian Order people who build very-hard-to-flatten panic rooms in their basements.

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Fandom: Star Trek: DS9
AU: Post-Canon NOS
Word Count: 564

Characters: Nadya Gennel, Sika Adan

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | more to come

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Around her Lakarian City is rubble, with barely a wall left standing here and there, and no buildings that could boast the same. At least there were still some survivors, few as they were. Enough to gather together where the most walls were standing, and they had the best hopes of finding intact foundations underneath.

Maybe a dozen families – many who’d had members who were part of the Obsidian Order before its fall – out of what had been nearly two million. Before the Dominion had begun its assault on Cardassia, slow and insidious at first, too much for ambition-blinded Tain to see. Those who’d survived here had retired and fortified their homes against their own former collegues when the Order had violated its role, and begun to build its own ships.

Now they gathered with their families, to dig out the best places to shelter as they began anew. No one would come to help them, even if they knew there were survivors here. They are too dangerous, a memory of old days when glory was mixed with fear, of a State that knew all, and dragged all down with it.

“What happens now, Gennel?”

Adan is the youngest of the Order survivors, with only a young daughter to provide for. His wife had been a Gul, one of those who’d joined Damar’s rebellion, and if she’s alive, there’s no way to tell, nor to tell her that her family is likewise.

“We survive, as we did when Tain broke the Order, when Dukat invited the enemy to the family table, when the Dominion rained fire on our homes and murdered our neighbors.” Nadya gives the man a brief look, before turning her attention back to tracking Jarra Varas as the woman surveys the cluster of remains that had once been Dine Keldar’s home.

Dine herself is keeping the children busy in a section of rubble that had been a park, and doesn’t have any underground structures to provide pitfalls for them to fall into, with the help of a few others. All of them bear injuries that preclude them helping with the clearing of debris, and Nadya is glad there are enough children to need all the wounded with them.

“Yes, but for what? There is nothing here but rubble, and we don’t know if anyone will even come looking. I don’t even know if there’s an intact communications unit anywhere.”

“We’ll find one, or we’ll find enough smashed ones to build a whole one.” Nadya clasps her hands behind her back, turning as she surveyed the rest of those that were on the property. Paran and his wife. Selik with her oldest two sons. Tajor and her older son.

The rest are in groups scouting for where to scavange and to see if there are any other survivors. They don’t expect any, but even one would be a victory against the Dominion.

“If no one else on Cardassia wants us, we will make sure they do not neglect our children, and we will stay here.” Nadya has no illusions how hard that will be, surrounded by the destruction of her home, and the tattered remains of her family. At least there are enough skills between them that they will not starve so long as they can find enough living soil to plant enough food, nor left without shelter when winter comes.